Ontological Turn report: Enacment, Agency and others

Enactment concept: it is difficult to translate into Spanish (our daily-use language). It is frecuently translated to act, but it is not exactly. In the legal field it is to enact, but it is translated as to constitute.

The STS have an inquiry about knowledge (how to know better or if a concrete knowledge  is true or false). It would be epistemology. STS then, turns to ontology: how one thing has become what it is, from an  empirical and descriptive view, as anthropologists work, in a very micro-fields and issues.

In the STS is a profound undermining of the taken for granted, "there is nothing qualitatively special on the scientifical practices who give them a real plus to the truth they offer".

(socio)Constructionism vs STS: the ontological turn in STS is not perspectivist. Constructionism silent on ontology, because there are different constructions; Instead, STS accept that there are multiple, changing and poor realities, but STS says that objects are created in practices, and these practices are worth reality, they are real. In the STS, the context idea is rejected: there is only the context in action: according as we speak, we create our context, and may be even materials around the object we're talking may not be part of our context and probably things that are very distant would be part of this temporal-and-poor context. Thus, there are practices and no contexts: as we speak, we connect with other elements, and in this way, we are going opening and contracting the network.

When can we consider that the actor-network has reality or is "closed" our particular actant? by the "Cutting the network" concept. When the process we're working is over due to their idiosyncrasical features. It can be anytime, unexpectedly and it can remain precarious.

Ontology, which is apparently a theoretical and a dense concept, STS make it an empirical concept.

Agency, translation and enactment are three different concepts.

Photo Credit: France Bleu

This week: First birthday POBICS!

Along this week, POBICS celebrate his first year of life! For this reason, we want to share with you some of our best materials: photos, papers, posts, etc. 

In this vein, we want to thank you for stay here weekly and for to read, discuss and share your ideas with us; as well as for wide the POBICS community. It's a big pleasure for us to watch how all of us (and you) have grown. 

Thus, here the most important keys about this first POBICS year:

• The Deleuzian seminary about Foucault (edited in three books), was one of the most important events we held last year, it was so important that we have use it in our current work in several times. Here the reports knowledge1, knowledge 2, power 1, power 2, power 3, and subjectivity.
• We also commented several ideas we were working on: Early Warning System, Speed, body or citizenship, for instance.
• We were in congress, like the 1st International AIBR Anthropology Congress, the II Critical Social Psychology Congress, or next year, the EASST Congress.
• We took a lot of photos:

• Finally, we applied for some grants and project. The groupal one was successful and we achieved a three years funded project, named "Citizen Participation in Social Aproppiation of Knowledge and Technological Design Processes". Unfortunately, one of our members could not achieve a personal grant (FPU) :(

And that's all. Once more time, we want to thank you your support and your participation in POBICS. We want to keep on track with you!

POBICS on the web: current works

In our current post, we want to show some of our working papers we are ending or reviewing. All of them are uploaded on our webpage (http://pobics.wix.com/pobics) so you can consult and watch them whenever you want. Thus, we can give you our current (and unpublished & fresh) ideas:

1) From Biopower to Kinepower in the European Union Biosecurity's Dispositifs

2) What is Biosecurity? The Biotic and the Regimes of Vitality

3) Fear of and Anger against the Other - the Strange, the Sick, and the imaginary Struggle for Survival.

4) From control to biomonitoring: life as its own sentinel

5) Scenarios as states of emergency:a new intelligence for the contemporary epidemiology

As we have said, there are also in our web and in academia.edu, so if you want to discuss them or comment it, feel free to do it here or in our webpage!

Photo Credit: POBICS web

Bruno Latour seminary: New concepts and thoughts

Previous considerations:

1) The actor-network is only one mode of existence among many others.

2) Diplomacy: The way to do that we need now is the diplomat. Drawing on the etymology of diplomacy (bridge builder, you have to negotiate, everything has the same value, we must articulate intelligibility conditions ...). Upon entering the Anthropocene era, you have to link it with Gaia. The agency would be a mediator between the Anthropocene and Gaia.

Tanner 1:

The Agency is not a will or an internal capacity: it is a record of actions. My agency is the record of what I do, the path of what I do; from effects to causes, and not vice versa. To define an agency we make a list, a network.

At the moment that an object is shaped (eg quasar.), All these people transformed signals showed on a display into a quasar, "That is a quasar." It is credited with a value of externality by implementing some technologies which we think is external and that it has always been there; this is the metamorphic zone.

Tanner 2:

Anthropocene: the moment which the human is a tectonic or geological force that can fight face to face lwith nature, at the same level (as planetary boundaries); is a new stage for the social sciences.

Here, we could be confusing Gaia with God, with some global or abstract. But nothing further, Gaia is a reading of Gabriel Tarde applied to nature.

Debate 2-2:

Why capitalism has survived so long despite the criticism it has always been subjected? One answer has to do with the ANT vision:  as a global being, capitalism is a mot d'ordre (empty of meaning). The strength of capitalism is his way to extract value or goodwill from many places and different ways, adapting to all in their micro-level. Thus, capitalism lands in a thousand different ways, and those details is what gives strength to capitalism.

The market is previous to capitalism (the trade is much earlier), but the first one is trapped by capitalism in a very specific way.

Capitalism: a "peaceful" method of generating wealth, moving wealth (goodwill). A capitalist doesn't purchase 20 yachts (in the Middle Ages, wealth was achieved by accumulation). The capitalist is the one who moves wealth to generate more wealth.

The global does not exist, it is articulated by operators (Internet, ozone ...). Capitalism is another operator that articulates the global on the Anthropocene time.

Institution in ANT: The actor-network create many mechanisms to stop to being a precarious actor-network, and thus survive; to be more solidified (the actor-network is always precarious, fragile, unstable). The actor-network is always in a process that allows it to survive. Thus, capitalism has created this sense of original nature (the first nature in Latour). It is a very very armored institution. Ontologically, macro or a large object is merely the sum or combination of micro elements (in the Gabriel Tarde's sense).

Harlequin coat: The Harlequin layer is made of pieces, but overall you see it as a whole, but it is composed of pieces.

Metrology: how big or long are the rails that are put into circulation by the knowledge that a scientific of technological group create (throughout translation processes). The more associated and bigger is your metrology, the freer and more power you are; and also more able you are to disconnect from all networks, linkages and partnerships.

Body in ANT: an interface, my body is a mediator as well. The body is not a beginning neither an end, it's a bridge, it is a intermediate step crossed by a lot of elements. You can be the beginning and the end at the same time in a particular mediation-process.

Photo Credit: Geralt